How to import data files from supplier website to your own

My question is this for those of us looking to use our own website whether hosted locally or through a hosting site.

When you find a supplier to drop ship, which is where I am at and they have a data file how are people converting those data files over to a format compatible with say OsCommerce or ZenCart the image files are easy those are just FTP.

Anyone want to comment on those who dropship and have their own website and how you handle the datafile for import into your datebase.

Anyone with any relevant info who may not be doing exactly this method but may have a solution is also welcome to reply.

Ideally, this information should be available in the Help Section of your webhost. You can check out OsCommerce/ZenCart FAQs, Tutorials, and forums.

You would need to find out what the current native format (access database, excel spreadsheet, etc) of the file that you are importing is and what are the file type options available for importing to your webhost. Then, you can look for a file format converter that you can use. There are free file format converters that you can find through Google.

As a Mac owner I have several tools available to me and a wide development community for such tools as Automator, Applescripts and I do have a PHP script written in 4.x for Easy Populate which is the tool that populates the database which I can have updated to do the job I was just reaching out to the community of other website owners to see how they were handling vendors data feeds and making them more useable and efficient.

That's good to know :) I'm sure there are a lot members who are dropshipping or running their own website who can share how they are handling vendor's data feeds and how it's working for them. It'll be an interesting discussion. Any inputs will be appreciated, guys!